It
by ElisabethAnne
Summary: The struggles of Alicia and possibly others not mentioned in the series. Rated T because some content could be taken for anorexia; also because I don't know what will come in later chapters.
1. Alicia

"It"

All of the credit went to Massie, but Massie was the very problem.

Alicia's life revolved around another being. She wasn't even the leading lady of her own life. Everything glamorous and elegant that Alicia had inherited from her mother and collected with wide, naive eyes in her many trips to Spain meant nothing compared to the clever and unbeatable cool of Massie Block. Every bit of gossip that Alicia could sink her teeth into, every second she spent perfecting her walk in high heels on the wooden kitchen floors, every piece of chocolate cake at which Alicia daintily turned up her nose was in vain. She would never be _the_ girl, but the _girl._ The _girl_ with _girly_ looks and a _girly_ sense of humour. She wasn't _the_ girl with the wit and uncontested ability to have a comeback edging from her throat before a threat was even presented.

Alicia swallowed dryly and pushed aside the cinnamon-encrusted waffles her mother had made her for the first day of school. She slowly spooned lemon yogurt into her mouth instead, knowing it would be her only food until twelve, when she would half-heartedly down a full meal under Massie's all-knowing gaze. Massie knew, of course, every struggle that Alicia's life was entangled in, the never-ending contest she sweated for, vying for the spot of Massie's best friend. Alicia's beauty and cosmopolitan qualities were merely an insipid platitude that Massie would soon tire of, she was sure. Dylan's humour and connexions to fame, and Kristen's intelligence and top-notch athletic abilities were sure to overcome Alicia's blandness. Massie would see through her façade; it wasn't a promise, really, but an expected fate that was etched into her skin like an unseen glove. It was inevitable, an unshakable conviction of which Alicia was terrified. Dylan, Kristen, Massie –_ especially_ Massie – none of them had to work for their reserved spots. They didn't spend their Saturday nights retching at their smeared reflexions, applying countless oils and pastes from the kitchen in the glorified name of false beauty, sweating to unrealistically peppy music, pushing aside homework to labour beside the bathroom sink. None of them, she was sure, had to work to maintain the cool emanating from the very cores of their beings. They lived it, they breathed it, _they were it_. Every word to come out of Massie's mouth was _it_. Every laugh choked out by Dylan, every smile gracing Kristen's lips, every walk, every glance, every breath, every inch of skin. Effortless. Envied. Charismatic. It.


	2. Dylan

**Thank you so much for the reviews. I'm sorry it's taken so long for me to update; I've been busy. I'm also sorry if this chapter isn't up to the standard I set with the first chapter.**

Dylan Marvil was praying to God about electric blue numbers.

The digital scale wavered beneath her vampy red toenails, sliding up, as did the fervent urgency of her prayer, and then down again. She sighed in relief, only to induce the numbers to climb yet again. Her two older sisters, of course, were both size-negative-sixes and fully capable of eating ice cream with every meal – and then _losing _weight. Dylan, however, would be unable to fit into her size-(positive)-four True Religions if she so much as ate a single Cheeto.

Dylan stepped off of the black scale conveniently located in her bathroom and watched as the numbers skated back to zero. She hadn't always been so envious of her sisters. She had been seven when she realised that her mother actually favoured her first two daughters over the third. _Seven years old. Barely in second grade._ Nevertheless, she idolised her mother and took pride in the few similarities they shared: red hair (though her mother's was professionally dyed), a mutual love for the camera (but then, so did the rest of America), and an obsession with _US Weekly_. That was all. Her sisters were beautiful and thin and blonde and tall and sophisticated, whereas Dylan was ugly (in her opinion) and fat and redheaded and short and boisterous, not to mention incredibly immature. She belched and made crude jokes to make girls at school laugh. And, she assumed, if they laughed, they liked her. This was how Dylan Marvil had taught herself to obtain and maintain friends.

Dylan reached for the green bag of bran chips by her computer, scrupulously counting out five chips so as not to overeat. It was part of the new diet her mother had enlisted her to take part in. "If you lose five pounds by the end of the month, I'll let you get extensions," Merri-Lee had said the day before over dinner. Her sisters had been snickering to each other and Dylan had been absolutely positive it was about her.

"I don't want extensions, Mom," she had almost implored. "I just want to spend time with you and I want you to like me. Just like me – you don't even have to love me. Please just like me." But she hadn't. Instead, Dylan had pasted a cheery smile over the grimace toying with her lips and conceded, "Great! Thanks."

This was why Dylan strove to be one of _them._ One of the girls with _it_. One of the girls who was envied, one of the girls who fit in, one of the girls who was relentlessly surrounded by a plethora of friends and adoring fans, one of the girls who was accepted by everybody..._loved_ by everybody. This was the life Dylan aspired to lead and she would do _anything_ in order to get so much as a glimpse of this impossible fantasy. She really would.

**Please review. (:**


	3. Kristen

**Gah. I'm sorry it's taken me so long to update. Reviews encourage me to update faster. (:**

It was only something as complex as human nature that could allow Kristen to both envy and pity her friends in the same aspects of life.

Kristen's future was mapped out in a clear, inescapable fate that had been sketched out by her parents at an early age. Naive and willing, she had accepted these duties as, inevitably, hers. But now, realising the liberty she had been denied and would continue to be denied for the rest of her trite existence, Kristen tried ineffectively to oppose the proposals intended to become her future. She was to become one of the girls who did nothing but study, had few friends (or none at all), had an externally successful career, and an internally despondent relationship with life.

What her mother had decided to mould Kristen's life into included but was not limited to the following: study to irrational lengths, attain a scholarship to an Ivy League school (preferably Dartmouth or Yale), attend Harvard Medical School, become a successful doctor, escape poverty, and repose in a satisfying, comfortable retirement.

Her three best friends, on the other hand, had absolutely no sense of direction or purpose, but seemingly knew exactly what to do when the right opportunity approached them. They were completely unperturbed by their lack of organisation and decency in conduct, utterly certain of a clear future. It was this freedom that Kristen envied, but the impending realities that provoked a feeling of pity towards her friends.

She leaned over her crossword puzzle, squinting in the dim lighting of the Montador's lobby. _17 Across: 12-letter word for "franchise."_

Perhaps if she continued to spend time with Massie, Alicia, and Dylan, much to the dismay of her parents, Kristen would be able to adopt the same attitude on life. Despite the years she had dedicated to an intensive education, Kristen couldn't provide a sufficient word to describe exactly what it was she aspired to attain, or to become. _Happy_ flashed through her mind more than once.

A horn sounded in the foggy distance, indubitably Massie's Rolls Royce. Kristen quickly scrawled _independence_ into 17-Across and draped her borrowed Prada bag over shoulder. The doorman smiled at her as he swung open the glass door and introduced her to the bitter wind. Kristen vacillated, fidgeting with her pencil.

She erased _independence_ and in the first two blanks of 17-Across wrote two letters that seemed to suffice.

_It._


End file.
